salted caramel sauce

More appropriately, this post would be called “burnt salted caramel sauce” or perhaps “why you should always make caramel with white sugar”.

I prefer using cane sugar for just about everything. Part of my whole “the less refined the better” kick. And normally that’s fine. Baking, coffee, etc. And then I decided that I wanted to make a caramel sauce to spice up a chocolate gateau I was making and put to use some cream I had in the fridge with a looming expiration date. (And when I say looming, I mean it had already past.)

Despite the fact that there was one that looked fabulous from smitten kitchen, I didn’t have salted butter. Now granted, I could have just added salt, but logic doesn’t always rule in the KC kitchen, so my google search continued. Fleur de sel caramel sauce came up with a recipe from a blog called Cork and Rind.

Since Mr. KC has offered his help, I asked him to read the recipe to tell me how much sugar. No problem.

And sure enough the recipe called for 1/2 sugar. I took a leap of faith/utilized common sense to deduce that it was a 1/2 cup and carried on. Note to self: Check previous recipes posted at some point to make sure ingredients are listed properly.

The real lesson came after adding the sugar and the water to the pot. A crucial part of making caramel is, well, the caramelizing process. And how does one judge that? Right, the color.

Use cane sugar and this is what you get.

Oh, what a pretty amber color you might say. Except for the fact that this was IMMEDIATELY after adding the water. The color never really changed. This was the color for the entire time. So, when one sense fails you, another picks up the slack. I spent the next 10 minutes with my nose in the air above the steaming pot, waiting for that moment when it went from smelling like nothing to smelling like caramel.

The verdict: Stick to using your eyes. While using my nose worked, it worked only in being about 10 seconds behind resulting in a very nice burnt caramel taste, but not what I was out to achieve. Either way, we still ate every scrap of it, and it complemented the chocolate gateau nicely (recipe to come).

I make a caramel icing that uses the same group of ingredients. However it’s put together differently. You caramelize the sugar, and at the same time, heat the cream to just under boiling. When the sugar mixture is nice and golden brown, add it to the hot cream. It will bubble up as described, but you won’t have to cook out a lump of seized caramel nearly as often.

Your sauce sounds great. I may make it sometime, since I like caramel better than chocolate!

Hmmm, curious. I actually had almost the exact opposite problem of it being too thick. I would try one of two things. One you could just try leaving it over a low flame to continue to heat to see if that thickens it up or two add the tiniest bit of cornstarch, which is essentially my answer to thickening anything up.

Just wanted to say THANKS for the recipe and detailed instructions. I have never been able to make caramel without burning it, but this one came out GREAT. Im going to use the salted carmel over vanilla ice cream with melted chocolate!

You’re so very welcome, Alison! Glad it turned out well. I actually just tried my hand at candy making this weekend (fleur de sel caramels), which turned out well and were much easier than I expected them to be. Make sure to stay tuned.